by joe eskenazi
staff writer
A few years back, Folgers coffee came up with the slogan, “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup” — as if the highest possible motivation for not dying in one’s sleep would be a mug of instant coffee.
Yes, that’s going a bit far. But Rita Semel knows that you can accomplish a lot more with a cup of joe than generate a morning buzz. The executive vice chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council has convinced a number of local Jewish organizations, temples and churches to begin stocking fair trade Thanksgiving Coffee from a Ugandan collective run by Jews, Christians and Muslims.
“We get good coffee, we help people in Africa make a good living and we further the cause of interfaith cooperation. How much better can it get than that?” she asked.
Following a recent Bay Area visit by J.J. Keki, the Ugandan Jewish leader of the Mirembe Kawomera Co-op, members of the interfaith council agreed to begin buying up the co-op’s beans, which are roasted and ground by progressive Fort Bragg coffee company Thanksgiving Coffee.
The S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, the JCC of San Francisco, Congregation Sherith Israel, Congregation Emanu-El and Congregation Sha’ar Zahav have already brought in hundreds of pounds of java, as have Grace Cathedral, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Swedenborgian Church and a number of other houses of worship.
The churches, temples and organizations brew the coffee for their staffs, serve it at banquets and fundraisers or sell it in the lobby. For every 12-ounce bag purchased, $1 goes back to the organization —in addition to the fair trade price paid to the Ugandans by Thanksgiving Coffee for 75,000 pounds of beans.
“This is good stuff. Personally, I don’t like coffee out of an aluminum pot. But if you put it into the thermos dispensers, it’s like having really fancy coffee at your temple or church. That’s a big deal!” said Nancy Sheftel-Gomes, Sherith Israel’s religious school educator.
One of Sheftel-Gomes bat mitzvah students, Deanna Tolstunov, has sold nearly $1,000 worth of coffee in the last month alone as part of a mitzvah project.
Mollie Schneider, the director of Emanu-El’s young adult programming, visited the Ugandan co-op in 2005 on an American Jewish World Service trip. The sight of kippah-wearing Ugandan Jews singing Hebrew songs on their way to synagogue will never leave her.
“Ugandan Christian, Muslim and Jewish people are working together to make this cup of coffee,” she said. “It’s what we should be doing in the United States in terms of interfaith relations.”
Speaking of interfaith relations, the Rev. Will Scott of Grace Cathedral is also thrilled to be serving the African coffee at his church.
“We’re trying to raise awareness about fair trade at the cathedral, and one of the exciting things about this particular coffee is that it’s not only fair trade and organic but coming from Africa, where Jews, Christians and Muslims have come together,” said Scott, associate pastor of the Episcopalian church on Nob Hill.
“That, to us, is a representation of what we are trying to be about, which is reconciliation despite differences to find a common ground.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California